All four postal unions sent a joint letter to Senate Majority Harry Reid on Aug. 5 expressing “utter dismay” at the introduction of S. 1486, the postal bill co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The bill continues the disastrous policy of mandating massive pre-funding of retiree health benefits and provides for major downsizing measures to pay for it, the letter notes.

A 2006 Congressional mandate requires the agency to “pre-pay” into a fund that covers health care costs for future retired employees. Under the mandate, the USPS is required to make an annual $5.5 billion payment each year for over ten years, through 2016. These “prepayments” are largely responsible for the USPS’s financial losses.

No other business prepays for all employee’s actual medical hospital bills 20 years from now when they retire… It’s crazy actually. Lets assume you will be in a nursing home at $120,000 a year and you will (let’s be nice), live 10 years… Therefore it will cost you $1.200,000. So, assuming you are currently 53, giving you 12 more years of work left, we would take $100,000 of your income every year for the next 12 years….

Think you’d go broke? Do you know any business that assesses themselves so harshly? Of course not. No one would assess themselves that harshly. But Congress did assess the postal service that harshly. Congress forced this huge payment, which takes money out of running the business to be sure, just like you losing $100,000 a year takes money out of you.

Obviously the unions are upset. For to be able to make the payments on these huge pre-payments, they are cutting people’s pensions and benefits to pay for it. Imagine working 40 years and retiring tomorrow with no pension, so those retiring in 20 years hence, will be fully funded? They ave a right to be mad.

Here is what Senator Tom Carper proposed.

Destroy 80,000 full- and part-time jobs after a one-year delay, by eliminating Saturday mail delivery and give the Postmaster General authority to eliminate additional delivery days in the future;

Slash tens of thousands of additional jobs after a two-year delay, by allowing USPS to reduce delivery standards and close hundreds of mail processing facilities and thousands of post offices;

Mandate the elimination of door-to-door delivery, threatening at least 16,500 additional jobs, and

Impose “cruel and discriminatory” changes to the Workers Compensation program that would leave injured federal workers vulnerable to impoverishment when they reach Social Security retirement age.

Do you think they’re a little bit angry? Do you think they’re a little bit justified?

“The 30 members of the Senate who have co-sponsored S. 316, the Postal Service Protection Act of 2013, have taken the right approach. That bill (Bernie Sanders )would strengthen the Postal Service, promote innovation and, most importantly, resolve the retiree health and pension policies that have crippled the Postal Service in recent years,” it says.

Bernie Saunders bill is aimed at promoting the prosperity of the Post Office, as well as those who work for it. Tom Carper’s bill, which insists on imposing the $5.5 billion penalty, is aimed at promoting the prosperity of financiers and banks. After all, who do you think, gets commissions investing off that $5.5 billion?

Banks = Delaware = Carper

That is why a Senator from little ole Delaware is in the heart of kicking down the US Post Office. Makes more sense now, doesn’t it?

There was little to report in Sanford. The big event was a bust. The police would not allow anyone in front of the courthouse and directed everyone to a park far away. Anyone without a GPS got lost. At most there were about 45 people at one time and probably 70 total stretched over the two hours. Everyone was well behaved, and the town is surprisingly not hostile. In fact, they prefer protesters over the media that has worn out its welcome lately.

A circle of the few gathered, a pastor said prayers, then anyone was allowed to go into the circle to speak. It was filmed in its entirety from a roof top on the edge of the park. Met one really nice Hispanic girl from Jacksonville who had come down to add her culture’s victims to the group. We all understood the importance.

It was a nice gathering, most were Southerners, Miami had the largest contingent I think. But the world is not going to change, at least from here. From what I hear, it was 10 degrees cooler here, a thousand miles closer to the tropics. :).

By December 2011 it was reported that Hostess Brands was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy a second time after it suspended payments for union pensions and was struggling to remain current on its $700 million loan.

On January 10, 2012, Hostess Brands filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy for the second time. In a statement in its filing, the company said it “is not competitive, primarily due to legacy pension and medical benefit obligations and restrictive work rules.” The company said it employs 19,000 people and carries more than $860 million in debt. The company said it would continue to operate with $75 million debtor-in-possession financing from Monarch Alternative Capital, Silver Point Capital and other investors…

Television talk show hostess Wendy Williams started a “Save The Twinkie” publicity campaign shortly after the bankruptcy filing. The campaign included promotions on The Wendy Williams Show…

In March 2012, Brian Driscoll resigned from his position as CEO. Gregory Rayburn, who had been hired and named Chief Restructuring Officer only nine days earlier, assumed the leadership position. Fortune reported that unions within the organization had been unhappy with Driscoll’s proposed compensation package of $1.5 million, plus cash incentives and a $1.95 million “long term compensation” package. Additionally, the court had discovered that Hostess executives had received raises of up to 80% the year prior. In an effort to restore relations, Rayburn cut the salaries of the four top Hostess executives to $1, to be restored on January 1 the following year…

In July 2012, the New York Post reported that negotiations (lead by Silver Point Capital) with the Teamsters Union were close to a possible agreement that could allow Hostess Brands to cut employee pay and benefits, if the company maintained funding of existing pension plans…

In May, all 19,000 workers had been warned (as required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) that they could face a mass layoff. In an email to the Appeal-Democrat Hostess spokesman Erik Halvorson said that the May notices were to alert employees to possible sale or wind down of the company, but that “our goal is still to emerge from bankruptcy as a growing company with a strong future.” These layoff notices listed the dates as July 7–21, but on July 5 another company spokesman told the Financial News & Daily Record that there were no immediate plans to start laying off Hostess employees…

These layoff notices listed the dates as July 7–21, but on July 5 another company spokesman told the Financial News & Daily Record that there were no immediate plans to start laying off Hostess employees…

Today, on November 16, 2012, Hostess announced that it was ceasing plant operations and laying off most of its 18,500 employees. It stated that it intended to sell off all of its assets, including the well known brand names, and liquidate…

The CEO, Gregory F. Rayburn stated, “Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders….

There you go. As was typically done by Bain Capital, preditory companies practiced vulture capitlism upon one of America’s icons. Move in, pay yourself highly, saddle the company with debt, declare bankruptcy, and use the employees pension to reward yourself and your investors…..

There is a solution. Legally make pension plans the first item that gets reimbursed when a company goes bankrupt and gets sold for assets. It is simply arbitrary that our legal system puts investors before employees. The order can easily be changed.

The significance of that change in wording, means that taking over a profitable company, saddling it down with debt, then selling it’s pieces, will cause you a loss. The employees will get the assets. Better to invest your money in building a new company from the ground up…. and hire more people… not fire 18,500….

Perhaps our government can step in and cut out GE Capital and give employees a chance, like we did with GM and Chrysler? After all, the Twinkie is just as great of an American Icon….

Here is the story of a doctor who is past his prime. Dr. Battmer told his appointment she had better be voting for Romney or he wouldn’t honor his appointment. She said she was supporting the President. He threw her out…. Why any woman would trust her privates to a man who still thinks our commander in chief is a muslim, is beyond me… I’d be afraid he’d still think babies were found under cabbages.

This guy’s license needs pulled… 70 and still practicing? Obviously he is incapacitated if he can’t make the simple common sense judgment to keep politics out of medicine…

Someone should show him my blog and all the factual, physical proof concluding that Obama is close to being the best president … EVER… He’ll have a heart attack, and help decrease the surplus population (Dickens quote).

I confess I did not know anything about Exodus International, one of the groups Chik-Fil-A is giving money to.

If you had any doubt who was going to lose this fight, you have only to know this….. As Wikipedia explains it, Exodus International asserts that reorientation of same-sex attraction is possible.. but it ACTUALLY warns its members NOT to go to counselors who claim they can help eliminate all attractions to the same gender…..

Techniques “can include abstinence, lessening of homosexual temptations, strengthening their sense of masculine or feminine identity, correcting distorted styles of relating with members of the same and opposite gender.”

In plain language, they are saying this. “We can make you into what we want you to be. You simply cannot be who you are.”

Who in their right mind would want to be made into some one else’s image of what that stranger thinks they should be, instead of what God, millions of years of evolution, every single second of ones lifetime, has ordained them to be?

All people are not heterosexual. It is simple fact. Forcing them to heterosexuality is as an equally diabolical act as forcing Mike Huckabee to be turned into a homosexual…. (You’re not trying hard enough, Mike… Like it. … Make yourself like it…)

But that said, he is going down on the chicken (sandwich) August 1st… at, you guessed it, Chik-Fil-A…..

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese government also launched as attack against Malaya.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island.

And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As commander in chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. .

Papers were filed with the ITC (International Trade Commission) by the South Korean giant Samsung LED against a division of another giant this time from Germany, Siemens….. over 8 patient infringements.

Samsung LED also said it filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Delaware to seek damages and a permanent injunction to bar Siemen’s subsidary, Osram’s alleged patent infringement from entering this country.

At stake is the financial future of these two companies. One will win, and the other for lack of a better word, will be vanquished.

Since Siemens actually has a plant in Delaware, next to the Glasgow Park off Route 40 and 896, I’m putting my bets on that giant…. if they get hurt, it will cost jobs.

Hotels, restaurants, transportation companies all stand to be a little busier as this gigantic fight, gets under way…. It would be helpful to practice on the Korean and German dialects now, before the event gets under way…